Date: Tue, 19 Jan 93 00:59:21 IST
From: mennen!mennil!crummi!dani AT acsu DOT buffalo DOT edu (Dani Flexer)
To: mennen!djgpp%sun.soe.clarkson.edu
Subject: Porting from MSC6/MASM/Vermont Views/Greenleaf Comm to djgpp

I am posting this for a friend who has no access to the Internet. Hope
someone out there can offer some helpful advice.

Hi Netters.

I have a PC based diagnostic tool I developed that communicates with a
target system over a serial line. It runs in real-mode DOS and has
reached the limits of its usefulness since it now needs to use
several megabytes of memory.

It was developed using Microsoft C 6.0, the Vermont Views character
based windows library for its user interface and the Greenleaf Comm
serial communication library for its serial communications.

Both the Vermont Views and Greenleaf Comm libraries are written in C
and MASM Assembly and come with sources.

My plan of action is to port the whole thing to djgpp. My code should
port easily enough as should the C parts of the Greenleaf Comm and
Vermont Views libraries. 

It has occurred to me that some of issues below may be in a FAQ I have
not seen. If this is the case, please accept my apologies and mail
me a copy of the FAQ. 

Problems and questions are as follows:

1. The Greenleaf Comm uses the serial port interrupt to trigger its
input code. Will this be compatible with djgpp?

2. Vermont Views accesses the screen memory directly. Will this be
compatible with djgpp?

3. Are there tools out there (or as part of djgpp) that would
simplify the movement of the assembly code of both libraries from
MASM to the Gnu assembler that djgpp uses?

4. Are there any other problems I may have overlooked?

5. While I would like to enable the software to utilize as much
memory as it needs while changing it as little as possible, I could 
conceivably get it to run using a different character based windowing
system/serial communication library that is already djgpp compatible.
Are their any such tools available? Please include archive sites and
full pathnames if you know them. 

I would be grateful for any comments from anyone with experience in
such a project. Please feel free to suggest any course of action you
feel is more appropriate than the one I plan.

Thanks for your help.


---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dani Flexer,                                       MENNEN MEDICAL LTD.

USENET: dani AT mennen DOT com
Phone:  972-8406751,  Air Mail: P.O.Box 102, Rehovot 76100, Israel 
FAX:    972-8406519   US Mail:  10123 Main Street, Clarence, NY, 14031